Tammi Nowack Photography Photoblog

About a month ago I announced that I would be offering a Basic Photography class, due to the high number of inquiries that I receive from people wanting to gain a better understanding of their camera, or how to improve the quality of their photos.  I had quite a fantastic response on Facebook and on the online survey and I’m happy to announce the details for the class are set and I’m opening up the registration TODAY!

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Details:

When: Saturday, June 19, 2010

Time: 10am-4pm

Cost: $75

Albany, GA

This class is designed for the beginner to intermediate hobbiest who is looking to gain a better understanding of the functions and capabilities of their digital camera and improve the quality of their photos. Some of the topics covered will be Camera functionality, Exposure, Shutter Speed, Light, Aperture, Lenses, Composition,  & working with various subjects.  Hands on practice and practical application will take a prominent place in this class.  The class has a limited number of participants in order to provide thorough and individualized attention to each class member.

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So, how do you sign up?

1. Fill out the Online Registration Form Below

2. Make your secure online payment

3. Wait to receive your Photography 101 Class email confirmation

4. Clean up your camera, dig out your user manual and be prepared to have some fun and get your learn on!

Class space is limited to 20 participants so get started and fill out the registration form today!

REGISTRATION FORM Tammi Nowack Photography 101 Class | Saturday, June 19, 2010

First Name*

Last Name*

City*

State

Zip

Phone*

Email*

Level of Experience*

Beginner Intermediate Advanced

Type of Camera*

Digital SLR Digital Point & Shoot Digital SLR is recommended, but not required.

Registration Information*

I have read and understand the registration information Class participation is limited to 20 participants and registrations are processed in the order in which they are received. If the class fills up, registrants received after-the-fact will be notified that they are on the waiting list and their payment will be refunded. If a registered participant is unable to attend, a 50% refund will be issued and the first participant on the waiting list will be notified.

Legal Stuff*

I have read and agree to the legal information below I am aware that certain risks and dangers are inherent in photography and may occur during an Tammi Nowack Photography workshop. These include, but are not limited to illness, accident, travel hazards by air or vehicle, native and non-native wildlife, insects, and flora.I voluntarily assume all risks and will hold Tammi Nowack Photography, the workshop leader, any co-leader or assistants, harmless from any and all liability, actions, causes of action, claims, debts, and demands which arise in connection with the workshop. The terms hereof shall serve as a release and assumption of risk for my heirs, administrators, and executors, and for all members of my family, including any minors accompanying me.

Payment Information Tuition for the Photography 101 Class is $75 and is due in full at the time of registration. Your place in the class will not be secured until you have completed your registration AND your online payment.Payment can be made here: http://tinyurl.com/2ax8e2k(copy and paste into browser)

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When I was in 6th grade I used to go to bed around 9 or 10 and then I would decide to clean out my nightstand drawer.

And then I would notice that all my books on the bookshelf needed tidying.

And then I’d ponder what I’d wear to school the next day and I’d end up organizing my entire closet.  My mom or dad would see the light on, open my bedroom door and eyes would widen at the mess I’d created in the process of cleaning up. But then it was 1 o’clock in the morning and I already knew I’d have to be applying some extra blue eyeshadow the next morning to brighten up my sleepy eyes.

Yeah, well.

Imagine me dead center in a pile of slouchy socks, clunky heeled jelly shoes, slap bracelets, Bon Jovi cassettes, and the entire Babysitters Club book collection and you’ve got an idea what you’re looking at over here in my brain.

It’s 2am.

And I am SO AWAKE.

So I thought we’d do a little Photo101. I know, it’s been awhile since the last installment but I really DO want to get better about it. So I thought that while I’m wide-eyed over here that I’d put up a couple tips to help you get your creative juices flowing.

Over Christmas, you may recall that I took a vacation and didn’t work for about a month and a half for a much needed break.  I didn’t even want to pick UP my camera and it sat in the corner getting dusty.  AFter a few weeks though, I was itching to grab it again but I was…BORED.  Wanting to do something different.  What to do when you’re in a creative rut? You’re tired of taking the same old pictures with the same old results?  Here’s a few ideas….

1. Take a break. DON’T take pictures for a day or two.  It might be just the rejuvenation you need.

2. Try a new perspective.  One of the earlier lessons I learned in my learning path is that there are literally HUNDREDS of ways to see the same thing.  Here’s a project I did years ago (wish I could find the pics but I can’t!):

Take an apple and your camera and take 50 pictures of that apple.  Make them all different.

Sounds hard, right? Impossible, even?  Hardly!  Give it a try and you’ll see once you get going that there are TONS of different ways you can take a photo of that apple – don’t be afraid to play around with different lighting, angles, etc –you might surprise yourself!

3.  Give yourself fun tasks. Over Christmas I spent about 30 minutes taking pictures only of things that were blue.  The boys and I all had fun scouring the house for blue things.  Do a color, a shape, a textile, whatever – have fun with it!

4.  Enjoy the process, don’t think about the after.

Sometimes I’ll have the urge to take some pictures but I dread thinking about the process involved in downloading the card, editing the pictures, resizing them for the web, etc. etc. etc.  Just take the pictures! Maybe you’ll edit them – maybe you won’t.  But you might enjoy the process more if you don’t think about the later.

5. Try something totally different.

There’s a whole world of imagery out there that is completely different than your style.  That’s what defines art – it speaks to different people in different ways.  I like happy, fun, bright, crisp photos.  I don’t really dig landscapes, or stuff that’s dark & twisty.  Which is why I decided to do something dark and twisty.  Just for fun.

6. Go find some inspiration! Look at all different genres…Documentarial, Nudes, Abstract, Fashion…there’s a whole world of wickedly talented photographers out there just waiting for you to soak up.  Enjoy their vision and feel inspired!

Lemme know if there’s anything YOU want to learn more about and I’ll try to do a tutorial or offer some tips in the future!

This post has been a long time coming…I keep saying that I’ll post another photography 101 lesson, but the holidays got me bogged down and I just didn’t get the time to do it. Have no fear! Your next lesson is here!

I’m so witty.

ANYWAY….today we’ll discuss Shutter speed. You may remember me saying from the past couple of lessons, that light is everything in photography. Light, light, light….we need the light, follow the light, look for the light, walk towards the light. Wait! Don’t do that! Come back and learn about shutter speed. Aperture and your Shutter Speed are the two factors that most greatly influence what your photograph will look like.

The shutter, in the most simplistic of terms, is the device that “clicks” in your camera when it takes the photograph. It’s sort of like a blink – your camera lens is the eye, and the shutter is the actual action of blinking. Your shutter can stay open for varying amounts of time, hence the term shutter speed. It captures movement and it stays open for seconds, or fractions of a second, depending on what you set it to do.

Imagine (or actually do it) closing your eyes.  Now imagine a friend standing in front of you doing jumping jacks.  If you open your eyes in a blink and immediately shut them, they were only open for fractions of a second, and whatever you saw when you opened them would be “froze” into an image in your brain – your friend in mid-jump for example.   But if your eyes are closed and you open them for several seconds, you won’t just have an image seared into your brain, you’ll have movement, or action – like an entire sequence of a jumping jack.

If you look at your camera’s display settings, you’ll see several sets of numbers. Hopefully, these are starting to look LESS like sanskrit to you, and make more sense. You already know what the decimal number means from our lesson on aperture, so the next number you’re looking for is your shutter speed. In the image below, you can see the aperture is set to 4.0 and the number to the left of that is the shutter speed. It’s set to 1/4000, meaning 1/4000th of ONE second. That’s fast!

So…how does that translate into actual photos?? Let me show you.

Today I was playing with my boys in their room with all their Christmas loot and they so kindly agreed to assist me in a Shutter Speed tutorial using the following subjects:

I don’t know about you, but my money is on the green one in lane 2.

Let’s begin. We’ll start by turning the dial on our camera OFF the green dummy box and onto the TV or S button, which stands for TimeValue or Shutter Priority.

In the Aperture lesson, we learned that when you turn your dial to AV (Aperture Value) that you can set the aperture and the camera takes care of all the other settings for you. The same is true in TV or S mode – YOU are determining the Shutter Speed and the camera takes care of the rest.

We’ll start by setting the shutter speed to…oh….I dunno. Let’s try 25. That would mean the shutter will be open for 1/25th of a second. On your mark….get set…..GO!

Whoa. Did you see something go by??? Apparently 1/25 is a bit on the slow side. Unless you’re going for the blurry action sort of photo. Here it is again, in case you missed it the first time: 1/25;

Let’s turn the dial up and make our SS a little faster. Here’s what we get at 1/50:

Not quite AS blurry, but still blurry. Let’s try 1/80:

Hmmm….we’re getting there. Let’s jump up to 1/125:

Here we are at 1/200. Almost there……

Ahhh….here we are! 1/320 seems to do the trick and effectively “freeze” the motion.

So there you have it. Visual aides to help you learn shutter speed. So if you’re having trouble with blurry images (fast kids, sports photos, etc) then it’s probably because your shutter speed is too SLOW. Turn the dial to TV or S and crank that shutter speed up to freeze the action! Any questions??

Many thanks to my awesome “assistants” for helping me with this posting.

Until next time!

~t

Okay, I hope that someone out there is finding these photo tips useful so that I’m not just posting tips and tricks for well…no one.

Today we’ll talk about Aperture. Here’s the (very) basic skinny on Aperture: As I said in some of my earlier posts, light is everything in photography. And the amount of light that enters your camera when you’re taking a picture determines what your photo will end up looking like. There are a few factors that determine HOW light enters the camera – the shutter speed, and the aperture, but we’re talking about aperture so just forget I said anything about Shutter Speed for today and we’ll hit on that at a later time.

Aperture was a tricky concept for me to understand when i was first learning photography because it’s a little backwards. Or at least it seemed that way to me. Because the thing about it is, that when your aperture is set to a LOW number, it actually means that the opening letting in light is very WIDE. And vice versa. If the aperture is set to a high number it means that the circular opening is very SMALL. WHAT?! I know, I know. Stay with me. If the opening is wide (low number) it’s letting in lots of light and if the opening is small (high number) it’s letting in less light.

Low Aperture (like 1.8, 2.5 etc) = Wide Open/Lots of Light coming in

High Aperture (like 22) = Tightly Closed/Less Light Coming in

Okay, now that we’ve established THAT, let’s talk about how that affects the actual appearance of your photos. The value of the aperture that you choose determines the Depth of Field your picture has. Depth of Field is just a fancy way of saying what’s in focus and what’s not in focus. As a portrait photographer, I like for the majority of my photos to have a very shallow depth of field – meaning that the person (or their eyes) are sharply in focus, and the rest of the photo is out of focus, or “blurry”.

See in the example below where the subject is in focus and the trees and forest behind her are blurred:

This image was taken with an aperture of 1.8 – which is the lowest aperture setting that the lens that I was using would go. On a side note, to determine the lowest aperture setting that YOUR lens will go (if you’re using an SLR) just take a look at the printing on your lense. It will say something like 85mm f/1.2 – that means that the lowest your aperture will go when you’re using that lens in 1.2 – VERY shallow depth of field (yay!). If you’re using a point and shoot, that number will just depend on your camera.

So how do you actually change the settings on your camera to alter your aperture?? You’ll have to check your camera’s manual for exact instructions for your brand, but most cameras have a dial similar to this one. When it’s on full auto (I call it the green dummy box – because you don’t have to do anything ) the camera readS the light through the viewfinder and chooses all the settings for you, but if you want to have a little more control, let’s turn that dial to something else.

If you’re just getting the hang of changing your own settings, or trying it for the first time, you can turn it to to the AV (aperture value) setting. If you’re feeling brave, you can turn it to M mode (full manual) for full control over all the settings.

In AV mode, you select the Aperture and the camera chooses everything else for you (ISO, Shutterspeed, etc) based on what you’re photographing. Turn the wheel on your camera (mine is located in the back, but yours might be on top or on the side) and look at the settings until you see the number changing around (1.8, 3.5, 5.6, 10, etc).

Here’s some examples of what the different settings do:

In the image below, I set up Optimus Prime, R2D2, and Mike Wazowski in a row, about 2 inches apart. It was taken with an aperture of 1.8. (Shutterspeed 1/2500, ISO400). Since the aperture is set very low, the camera is letting in a lot of light, and the depth of field is very shallow, so only Mike Wazowski is in focus.

Here, these 3 pictures were all taken within about 4 seconds. The settings are the same, my camera didn’t move. The only thing that changed was the object that I chose to focus on.

Here’s what happens when I increase the aperture.

F/3.5

F/5.6

F/9.0

F/22

Did you see it? I kept the focus on Mike Wazowski, but as the aperture value increased, everything behind him became more in focus as the aperture was increased. Here they are side by side for comparison:

And here’s a low aperture in an actual portrait, with PEOPLE.

Go forth and try it and let me know how you do! Soon, you too can take pictures with a lovely smooth background like this:

Does it make sense? Did I explain it well enough?? Any questions??

Last week, I gave you some basic tips on how to take better pictures of people, and I touched briefly on finding the light and making it work to your advantage. Today I’ll show you how to move your subject into better light and what a difference it can make in portraits.

With winter setting in, most people will be staying indoors more, so you’ll have to take more pictures inside. So how do you get better pictures of people indoors??? Turn on your flash?? NO!

That’s the first tip for today: TURN YOUR FLASH OFF.

I never use my flash. Seriously, NEVER. In fact, yesterday I turned my camera to auto mode so that I could take a photo with the pop-up flash for demonstration purposes for this blog post and discovered that my flash is broken. And I didn’t even know it because I can’t remember when I’ve ever used it. I have used my external flash on a few occasions, like a wedding or a sporting event when it was absolutely necessary, but I never ever use it when I’m photographing people, and most likely – you don’t need it either. So turn it off and find the light.

The biggest drawback to flash is that it creates pinpoint catchlights in the subject’s eyes, or the dreaded red eye. Catchlights are the shapes of light reflected in the subjects eyes – they bring life and brightness to the person’s eyes and will make your pictures stand out. Go look in a mirror, or look at your spouse’s eyes, kids’ eyes, etc and you’ll see the shape of the light in the room in their eyes.

Here’s an example. In the photo below, you can see the white rectangular reflections of light in the baby’s eyes – these are catchlights. And they make her eyes look bright, sparkly, and full of life – don’t you think?

Now, when you’re indoors this winter, and your flash is OFF because it makes yucky catchlights, you’ll have to use windows and doorways to add light to your subject.

In the photo below, Kid#2 is laying on our coffee table, with our living room windows about 6 feet behind him. Since he’s looking into the darker part of the room, his eyes are dilated, and there’s virtually no light in his eyes.

So I asked him to turn around on the table and face the windows. See what a difference it makes? His pupils are smaller, making his blue eyes look brighter, and there’s some catchlights in his eyes, giving them life and light.

Finally, I asked him to move close to the window. Here, he’s sitting directly on the floor in front of the window. We have sheer curtain panels over the windows so they offered a nice diffused light from the sun to evenly light his face and make his eyes bright and full of life.

So now it’s your turn! Turn people towards windows, or step outside your house and shoot through the doorway. Look how the light reflects in people’s eyes and find the light and use it to your advantage.

Let me know if you found these tips helpful, and we’ll do another “lesson” next week!